A transgender lifer was found suffocated in her cell in Perth Prison just hours after being handed a letter saying her bid to be released had been refused, a fatal accident inquiry has heard.
Sarah Riley – the only person identifying as female among more than 660 men in Perth Prison – had been held for more than nine weeks in the segregation unit because moves to relocate her to an all-female establishment were “dragging on”, the probe was told.
Riley, 29, who was subject to an order for lifelong restriction (OLR), was recalled to the jail after allegedly breaching the terms of her licence while she had been living in the community as a woman, in supported accommodation in Perth city, for only three months.
The inquiry at Falkirk Sheriff Court was told this followed “an issue related to alcohol, drugs, and threatening a male.”
She had been made subject to the OLR at the High Court in Edinburgh in 2008, with a minimum prison term of two years and eight months, for knifing a man in the back in Aberfeldy, when was she still just 18 and known as Aiden.
She was re-arrested on November 6 2018 and returned to HMP Perth and placed in the segregation and reintegration unit (SRU), initially for 72 hours.
The inquiry was told this was to allow investigations into “potential risks to her safety” in being held in mainstream halls, and also “to maintain good order in the establishment”.
Despair after tribunal verdict
On January 8 2019 she attended an OLR tribunal in the jail and three days late was handed a letter from the Parole Board saying her application to be released had been refused and it would be another 12 months until that could be reviewed.
The inquiry heard Riley, described as “articulate”, had written in a prison document: “I have given up.
“Any representations I make are just pointless endeavours.
“No matter what I write, if I don’t get out at my tribunal I will never get out.
“Should that happen I will disengage entirely.”
The inquiry heard that the night before she was found dead, Riley selected books from the prison library trolley before being locked up for the night at 5.15 pm.
At 08.09 the next morning, January 12 2019, she was found dead in her cell, of asphyxiation.
A post mortem found she had also taken a potentially fatal dose of prescription medication she was allowed to keep in her cell but death would have occurred in minutes due to her smothering herself.
Manager of the 14-cell segregation and reintegration unit at Perth, George Stewart, said Riley – whom he had known previously in Perth Prison when she was Aiden – was “okay” with being in the SRU and was allowed to have “feminine items” with her.
He told the inquiry: “The SRU was putting her as much at ease as she could be in a male environment.”
Wanted to go to all-female prison
Mr Stewart said the jail’s deputy governor had been pushing for Riley to be moved to a female jail but a request for a transfer to Edinburgh Prison’s all-woman Ratho House wing had been turned down.
Riley herself had said she did not want to go to Cornton Vale, because of a “bad experience” there previously.
Mr Stewart, 61, a prison officer for 34 years, said: “I thought it would be a relatively fluid and quick process to find her accommodation in a female establishment.
“She wanted to go to a female establishment, which was her right.”
Worries over time in unit
The inquiry heard Riley had been receiving hormone treatment from a clinic in Glasgow.
In the third week of December 2018 she was placed on observations under the Scottish Prison Service’s suicide prevention policy “Talk to Me” after saying she would “take all her meds and not be bothered if she woke up” after laser hair-removal treatment at Ninewells Hospital left her in pain and “very down”.
She had been on suicide prevention supervision on five previous occasions in Scottish prisons – her first incarceration being in December 2007 when she was still 17.
Mr Stewart said that “as a transgender prisoner identifying as female in a male prison, Riley was fairly unique” but she said she felt safe and comfortable in Perth as it was familiar and the staff knew her.
But he told Sheriff Pino Di Emidio, presiding, he had become concerned about the length of time she ended up being held in the segregation unit.
He said: “Most people in Perth were concerned about the fact that this was dragging on, and probably shouldn’t have been.
“I don’t believe she should have been in a male establishment.
“The Governor of the prison thought she should not have been there.”
The inquiry continues on Wednesday and is expected to hear further evidence in the new year.
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